Glenn Flickinger sits down with historian and author Paul R. Bruno to trace the Jeep’s unlikely birth—from a desperate 1940 Army request for a ¼-ton 4×4 scout car to a battlefield icon that helped win World War II.

We’ll trace the origins in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the tiny American Bantam Car Company built the pilot Jeep in an astonishing 49 days, before Willys-Overland and Ford entered the fray and the Army standardized the vehicle. We’ll talk about how a handful of engineers, procurement officers, and test drivers turned sketches into steel, and why the Jeep mattered so much to the Allied war effort.

Paul is one of the leading chroniclers of this story. He’s spent two decades researching the Jeep’s origins and has written a trilogy on it: The First Jeep (a deep dive into Bantam’s crash program and what it teaches about rapid development); The Original Jeeps (a narrative of the three-way race among Bantam, Willys, and Ford, honored with Military Writers Society of America and Global Ebook awards); and the photo companion, The Original Jeeps in Pictures. His work blends archival detail with clear storytelling, showing how the Army’s specs evolved, why Bantam’s breakthrough couldn’t scale, and how Willys and Ford shaped the final wartime Jeep.

We’re grateful to UPMC for Life  for sponsoring this event!